LIFEWORLDS IN AN ENLARGED EUROPE: Differences in personal spatiality in Estonia and Sweden

The enlargement of the European Union (EU) to the East has been analysed from both a political (see e.g., Kučera, Pontuso 2005) and an economic (see e.g., Gabrisch 1997) standpoint. Less attention has been paid to identities (Arts, Halman 2005) and to spatial relations (e.g., Madianou 2005). The focus of this article is on how people mentally perceive the extension of the geo-cultural space around them. Feelings about which regions are perceived by individuals as distant and close, safe and unsafe, interesting and uninteresting, may play an important role in making political decisions. For example, the negative results of the EU Constitutional Treaty referendum in France and The Netherlands and the discussions concerning the nature of the treaty indirectly echo peoples’ uncertainties about change in the economic and political space.

The present analysis focuses on the ‘new’ EU member states that had been annexed by the Soviet Union and underwent a rapid opening up and economic and political transformation. The paper asks if the spatial security/insecurity felt by people is smaller or greater, socially less or more differentiating, in post-Soviet countries than in countries of stable development? Is spatial security/insecurity related to the social integration of certain groups, or are the differences between the countries with different social context more important? In the present article, Estonia and Sweden are used as examples, respectively, of ‘new’ and ‘old’ European countries.

A more detailed hypothesis of the study is presented in the section on ‘Method and questions of the study’. The empirical results of the analysis are presented in the fourth and fifth parts of the paper. First, however, I set out models for the EU integration of the transformation societies and the empirical and theoretical framework of this analysis.

Transition countries and welfare states with different socio-cultural and economic resources are parts of the same globalisation field (Outhwaite 2005). In this context, some researchers support the view that the harmonisation of spatial relationships takes place in the form of cultural convergence where a peripheral country (such as a ‘new’ EU country) directly takes over the behavioural patterns of a central EU country (see e.g., Hedegaard and Lindström 2003: 3). In addition, the geopolitical rhetoric of ‘East and West’ or the ‘return to Europe’ has been central to discussions concerning military strategies, national identity, political economy, and diplomacy in Europe (e.g., Hagen 2003).

Other studies that analysed the outcomes of Europeanization have regarded the transformation and backward developments probable (Radaelli 2003). For example, EU enlargement may, in addition to an expected stimulating impact, deepen the trauma of transition – whether this be for certain groups of people, for the whole society, or over the wider EU territory where these countries belong.

Thus, there are several ways in which EU integration of the transformation societies may also reshape the spatial perceptions of the ‘older’ member states. Analysing the perceptions of spatial changes using Estonia and Sweden as examples enables coherence/fragmentation in a new EU to be described.

Spatiality has become one of the central terms in contemporary social theory, largely due to the development of new technologies, and especially information and communication technologies. These have produced a situation in which the idea of territory has gradually lost its importance in spatial relationships while representations have become more important. For example, Arjun Appadurai (1996) uses the term ‘mediascapes’, referring both to the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information and to the images of the world created by these media. At the same time, the connections between cultures are no longer restricted by a particular territory – as in the case of ‘multi- and intercultural’ communication patterns (e.g., contacts between minority and majority cultures within a country) – but are rather transcultural in nature, ranging over the territories (Welsch 1999).

Personal spatiality – how the surrounding countries or cultures are perceived – is involved in that relationship of an individual to the world that Habermas and others have called ‘lifeworld’. The present article is primarily based on Habermas’ (1989) conception of the lifeworld as a relationship to the system consisting of the actual experiences and results of previous experiences together with expectations about future experiences. As a result of increasing mobility, there is an increasing plurality of lifeworlds (see e.g., Keupp et al. 2000).

According to Heiner Keupp (2002), this plurally constructed world may be an extremely liberating experience for individuals. However, others have argued that networking and globalisation may also cause anguish and fear (see e.g., Castells 1998; Beck 1992; Hlavin 1998) that in the present paper could be described as the certainty-uncertainty dimension of spatial relationships. For example, according to Bauman (see e.g., Bauman 1997 [1995]), when a readiness to learn new rules and to take account of the potential risk involved in encountering different cultures is limited, a feeling of uncertainty could follow. Hence, an ‘open’ personal spatiality – comprising the skills of operating in different lifeworlds – can be seen as an important resource today. Closed political systems such as the Soviet Union, impeded the reproduction of this resource.

One of the influential factors in opening society and building up democracy is societal trust, defined by Piotr Sztompka as ‘a bet about the future contingent actions of others’ (Sztompka 1999: 25). Familiarity of the ‘lifeworld’, among other factors, is important in conducting the trust culture (Sztompka 1999: 122–5). The present article compares the relationships between societal trust with personal spatiality of inhabitants in Estonia and Sweden, a ‘new’ and an ‘old’ EU member state, in the context of EU enlargement and general globalisation. Subsequently, I will give an overview of the peculiarity of representations of spatial relationships in both societies.

In the Soviet time, the spatial perceptions in Estonia were characterized by the detachment from the Western world. Although, during the Soviet time real travelling opportunities were wide ranging from the Baltic States to Caucasus, the space was still imagined as narrow and limited because of some single Western media channels, especially Finnish TV-channels that promoted knowledge of cultures outside the Iron Curtain. Therefore, on the one hand, a one-sided world produced by the official media existed in the consciousness of people where capitalist countries were seen as a collective enemy, and, on the other hand, an informal so-called ‘world of desires’ that was created by following some Western media channels where the West became a certain metaphor of freedom at the grass-roots level (see Jakobson 2002).

In the beginning of the 1990s, a sudden shift from East towards West took place in the Estonian economic space. Besides economic and social changes, there have been significant cultural changes in Estonia, especially for one third of the population, the Russian-speakers. They discovered themselves being a minority group after the collapse of the Soviet Union and have been confronted with changes in identification (see e.g., Vihalemm and Masso 2003).

In connection with these changes, I can bring out the following spatial developments in post-communist Estonia: (1) In public discourse, the West as an ideological-mythical metaphor has disappeared and Western countries defined as the former single bloc are represented in the media as a heterogeneous mosaic picture. (2) Former representations that were ideologically controlled by the socialist union are replaced by market-driven (commodified) representation. According to empirical analyses conducted in Estonia, travelling has become a part of the post-Soviet consumption culture (Keller and Kalmus 2004). (3) Romantic discourse of freedom in the Western world has been replaced by rational (projects, money, policies) discourse. For example, Sweden has been portrayed in Estonian newspapers as a positive reference in the social policy context of the welfare in Nordic countries (Sooväli 2000). (4) The rest of the world as the former collective desired object has become (through contacts) the fatal distinguisher of individuals. According to empirical studies, contacts in the Western world have become one of the most important bases of self-positioning (Lauristin 2004). Therefore, public space offers numerous opportunities to relate to the outside world, to mentally capture the opened space.

The present article uses as the basis of comparison Sweden, a welfare state of stable development in a non-central position in the EU. Despite relative stability, several changes in the last decades also describe this society. For example, despite the stable economic growth (between 1994 and 2000, 3.2 percent per year on the average), Sweden has lost its leading position in economic wealth to Finland (Hedegaard and Lindström 2003) in using more effectively the benefits of common economic space of the European Union.

Unlike in Estonia, the immigrant groups in Sweden consist mostly of residents from Finland and other Nordic Countries, as well as from Yugoslavia, Iraq. The spatial distances are among other factors created in the context of a new kind of nationalism, where minority languages are viewed positively and the importance of Swedish for national identity is much less evident, for example compared to France (see e.g., Graf 2002).

In Sweden, the media and state borders have been opened in parallel with general globalization trends. Still, events reflected in the media are often ‘old-fashioned’. For example, the media does not want to ‘admit the agenda of development of actual relationships’, so inertia of the image from the beginning of the 1990s is dominant in discussions, the habit of taking Estonia as a non-equivalent partner (Vaino 2004). According to Swedish media researcher Jan Ekecranz, Swedish news media about Estonia reflects a certain colonialistic way of thinking. There are two metaphors prevailing, one of the Hansa, a celebration of commerce across borders, the other of Backyard, a warning about terrible and potentially dangerous conditions beyond the border (Ekecranz 2004).

Thus, spatial relations have changed in both cases (more in Estonia than in Sweden). The spatiality disseminated and constructed by the media is heterogeneous, offering different interpretations of an open space (national, consumerist, the dichotomy between East and West). Personal contacts with other countries have also become more frequent over the past decade. The changes should also have been reflected in peoples’ spatial perceptions.

The main assumption of analysis is that the elements of personal spatiality are quantitatively measurable.

In the present paper, personal spatiality is operationalised through three questions that were formulated in the questionnaires of Estonia and Sweden in the same way: (1) How close, understandable the following cultures seem to you? (2) How interested are you in getting news about the countries named below, keeping in touch with the events taking place in these countries? (3) Different contacts give a more specific idea about life in other countries. What are your contacts with the countries given below? In the present article, responses to these three questions have been used in reference to 12 countries: Latvia (neighbouring country with a similar position), Finland and Sweden (neighbouring countries with better living conditions), Poland/Czech (transition countries), Germany (EU ‘great power’ that historically had cultural hegemony in Estonia), England/Ireland (EU ‘great power’ that is linguistically ‘embraced’ due to high competence in English), France (EU ‘great power’), the USA/Canada (world's ‘great power’, global cultural hegemony), Arab countries (potential ‘dangerous area’ created in the media), Russia (‘dangerous country’ based on direct experience as depicted in the media), Latin America (represented as a distant area through soap operas), Asia (distant exotic countries).

The analysis uses data of the sociological survey conducted in Estonia and in Sweden. The Estonian empirical data is based on the representative survey ‘Me, the Media and the World’, that was carried out by the Department of Journalism and Communication of the University of Tartu in co-operation with the research company Faktum during December 2002 and January 2003. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,470 respondents according to a territorially representative population model of Estonia.

Simultaneously with the survey in Tartu, a similar questionnaire was also prepared and conducted in Sweden. Media researchers of Södertörn University College, in Huddinge, a suburb of Stockholm carried out the survey ‘Changing Mediascape’. A postal questionnaire was conducted in the South-Stockholm district with 1,271 respondents from December 2002 to March 2003. Thus, the data collection method used in the two surveys was somewhat different, since the most reliable study method in the given culture was chosen, i.e., the highest response rates in Estonia have face-to-face interviews, on the other hand postal survey in Sweden. However, I am aware of the possible difficulties (bias) in interpreting the data derived from different samples and with survey design, and from different cultural, societal, etc. backgrounds. The structure of the samples is given in Table 1.

In order to analyse the relationships, personal spatiality indexes are calculated in a way that in the case of a particular country, all three significant components of personal spatiality described in the previous sections, were summed – interest in the news (as an indicator of virtual spaces of the media), cultural closeness (as an indicator of cultural certainty), and contacts with other countries (as an indicator of face-to-face spatial relations related to individual economic opportunities).¹ Instead of grouping the countries, the single country indexes were analysed since the spatial dimensions meaningful for Estonia and Sweden differ significantly, and are analysed in a separate article (Masso 2008). Only the countries with small absolute values were merged for the analysis (USA, Arabic countries, Asia, Latin-America). The statistical criteria for calculating index variables were the correlation coefficient Although the correlations were rather moderate (r = 0.265) in the case of contacts and media interest, the correlations were significantly higher in the case of contacts and cultural closeness (r = 0.355), and between variables of cultural closeness and media interest (r = 0.55). The reliability coefficient Cronbach alpha had a size of 0.7, which is acceptable in the social sciences, and hence the used set of variables measures well the latent construct – personal spatiality. For more detailed description about calculating spatial indexes see Vihalemm (2006).

Multinomial logistic regression was employed to analyse the relationships of the indexes of personal spatiality to the independent variables, and the program SPSS was used. Unlike the regular linear regression, the logistic regression enables to analyse the categorical variables, e.g., to estimate the logits of having high value in the contrast of having low value in personal spatiality index. The relationships with the following variables are analysed: socio-demographic variables, trust (general trust, or trust towards media or institutions), and feeling of belonging to various social groupings.

Based on the abovementioned theoretical and empirical presumptions, I am looking for answers to the following questions:

• 1.

  What are the peculiarities of personal spatiality in transitional Estonia, which recently came out from behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, compared to Sweden, a country of stable development? Is the personal spatiality of inhabitants in Estonia more or less ‘open’ than the inhabitants of Sweden? The initial hypothesis is that the decades-long cultural closeness of Estonian society has created a specific personal space, characterized by more modest readiness to communication over the state borders, at least compared to the Nordic welfare state Sweden.

• 2.

  As regards personal spatiality, is the population of Estonia socially more or less differentiated than the population of Sweden? Is spatial security/insecurity related to the social integration of certain groups of people, i.e., does it vary from country to country according to the social group, or are the differences between countries, which are in different stages of development, more important? According to the initial hypothesis, personal resources and clear identities could support the personal cultural opening in the transition societies.

From 1991 to 2003, all social space indicators discussed in the present research have changed significantly, including media, cultural closeness, and contacts.

Results in Table 2 show that between 1991 and1994, after opening the Iron Curtain, no sudden interest was seen among inhabitants in Estonia towards the news of other countries. Interest in events taking place abroad has increased foremost in the process of joining the European Union between 1994 and 2003, the purpose of which was structural ‘catching up with’ Western countries and following the requirements of joining the European Union. Between 1994 and 2003, increasing interest did not involve only the EU member states. It was important for Estonians to also compare themselves with other transition countries in the same position (e.g., Poland), Western bigger countries in a better position, and Russia, ‘the dangerous country’ as depicted in the media. Thus, the change in media space is not created by opening of state borders but rather by a change in collective self-positioning (i.e., becoming a candidate country), which is supported by their comparisons with as diverse references as possible.

Interest in the news of different countries varies significantly more in Estonia (the data range between the largest and smallest values is 41) than in Sweden (data range 8), at least based on the data of 2003. For example, there is a great interest in the news of geographically and culturally close Nordic countries, while no interest is taken in the events taking place in Asia, Arab countries, and Latin America. The interest of the Swedish people has a consistently high economic influence concerning the EU countries, culturally and geographically distant countries, and the global cultural hegemony in the USA; the latter tendency has, compared to Estonia, been longer supported by routine spatial structures of consumption practices (e.g., McDonald's) (see e.g., Dickhard and Hauser-Schäublin 2003). In general, Swedish interest in foreign news is on an average 10 percent greater than the respective Estonian results. It is probably due to circumstance that in a stable country, which has gradually opened to the world, people have gradually got accustomed to receiving foreign news.

In the dimension of perceiving cultures as close and clear, there is no common distinctive tendency between Estonia and Sweden as it emerged with interest in the news. In many cases, the higher degree of cultural closeness with different countries imagined by inhabitants of Estonia is the same or even more common than in Sweden. Still, the way the cultures are imagined differs in comparison of these two countries. For inhabitants of Estonia, Finland and Sweden are culturally clear and create little uncertainty. At the same time, Swedish inhabitants consider the USA and England cultural hegemonies closer than Finland, with whom they have more real (economic) contacts. Contacts with different countries also show that in Sweden, Nordic identity means a belonging that is rather based on certain symbolic values than relationship networks, i.e., despite economic contacts with Finland (22 percent), the inhabitants of Sweden have been there more seldom (35 percent) than inhabitants of Estonia who have visited their neighbours Latvia (65 percent) and Russia (56 percent). For Estonia, the Nordic countries connote with a desire to belong to the Nordic cultural space. The roots of this, among other things, date back to Soviet times when Slavic people saw the Estonians as similar to Nordic people; ‘different by their looks’ compared to the Slavs and as a nation ‘with better living conditions’ (see, e.g., Masso 1999, 2002). The desire to belong to the Nordic cultural space is supported by friendship ties with Nordic countries.

Estonian inhabitants' activity in creating personal contacts is comparable to the inhabitants of Sweden, including the countries where there is not a considerable number of foreign Estonians (e.g., Germany, Latvia). In 1994–2003, the number of people in Estonia who have been to Germany, Finland, and Sweden has doubled. During 10 years Latvia, Czech Republic, and Poland are still often visited. This Eastern orientation is not supported by increasing business contacts but primarily by the existing blood relationships and friendship ties and by representation of these countries in the media. Estonia is characterised by few economic contacts with Finland and Latvia where, unlike in Russia, there are no obstacles for it.

Russia with mainly the personal experience of the Soviet time has fallen in the ranking of visited countries, primarily because many young people have not been there. Decreased contacts between Estonia and Russia show the certain spatial homogeneity between Estonia and Sweden. Still, it is not purely cultural convergence as behavioural patterns of the past, the impact of the media and narratives depicted there have created different understandings for Estonian and Swedish inhabitants about strategically important spatial nodal points.

In 2003, the number of contacts in Estonia was significantly lower than in Sweden primarily for such geographically distant countries like Japan, Latin America, and the USA but significantly fewer visits have been made to such Western European countries as England, France, and Germany. The narrower contacts of Estonian inhabitants are due on the one hand, from poorer financial opportunities. On the other hand, the reason is how the question is raised in the study, and also the time factor – as for most Estonians, these countries have been accessible for only about 15 years.

In summation, if Sweden is characterised by a media society of late modernity, then Estonian inhabitants are adapting to the benefits of modern society (e.g., increasing mobility, growing number of contacts) but also in keeping control of uncertainty arising from foreign cultural contacts. In Estonia, the basis of self-identification is quite concrete, the narrative being based on particular events reflected in the media. Thus, the results show that in the formation of attractiveness of different countries and personal spatiality, historical impact, neighbourhood, cultural hegemony today (how much the language is spoken, economic power, mass culture production), and other factors are becoming more and more important. Therefore, the following subsection is focused in greater detail on these aspects of personal spatiality.

Next, the characteristics of personal spatiality are analysed more closely. Tables 3 and 4 present the results of multinomial logistic regression. As a dependent variable, eight index variables of personal spatiality are used and are described in more detail in the section ‘Method and questions of the study’. In the tables logit coefficients are provided. In multinomial logistic analysis, the comparison is always with the last value, i.e., the logits of explanatory variables (B coefficients in the ordinary linear regression) are used to estimate the log odds that the dependent equals its highest/last value. Since the high personal spatiality values regarding a particular country are compared to the low values, the last are a reference category, which are set by SPSS zero, and hence not presented in the tables. In Tables 3 and 4, only statistically significant logit coefficients are presented.

It appears from Table 3 that Estonia is characterised by relatively high heterogeneity of personal spatiality in socio-demographic groups. Estonian higher personal spatiality value in the case of Russia often expresses the collective social memory of the Russian-speaking people who have not adapted to cultural changes that well. Higher personal spatiality index in the case of Germany, France, England/Ireland, and the USA rather describes younger groups of people with somewhat better cultural adaptation to Western orientation. At the same time, Estonian neighbours Latvia, Finland, Sweden, and other countries (mostly more distant countries like Latin America, Asia, and Arab) have in some degree a so-called more democratic representation, and they are not very different by their socio-demographic variables. Earlier studies have also shown that modernisation patterns, which, among other things, are also expressed by personal spatiality, may be different by their socio-demographic variables. One of the best examples here is Africa where the limits of democratic development, economic liberalisation, etc do not emerge in the case of particular countries but rather in numerous ethnic groups in these countries (Neuberger 2001).

In Estonia, personal spatiality is mostly related to general trust towards social groups (i.e., the entrepreneurs, scientists, politicians, etc.). Therefore, personal spatiality is related to social trust which Sztompka, Inglehart, and other authors (see e.g., Sztompka 2004) have interconnected with the development of democratic culture. The results of the present study enable to assume that the mechanical expansion of borders (e.g., new EU member states) without overcoming transition trauma and formation of trust culture may cause certain cultural isolation, even xenophobia.

Based on the number of relations, the next factors are age and education; the lower value in personal spatiality index of younger people with an education who have more evaluated the skills in foreign languages when in contact with other cultures was a self-evident result. Cultural resources available to these groups of the Estonian population decrease the occurrence of cultural trauma arising from social changes. Earlier analyses have also shown that due to explosively increasing foreign language knowledge in Estonia (besides Estonian and Russian, English and also Finnish, German, French and other languages have emerged), the foreign languages have in general become the capital (Masso and Vihalemm 2005).

Economic capital in the form of income appeared to be less important in describing personal spatiality; the income was an important factor primarily in the case of economically and culturally hegemonic countries (England, Germany). Besides, other studies made in this field have shown that the perceived social status (e.g., being on a higher social scale today and 20 years ago) could also be an important factor resulting in more open personal spatiality (especially with Western countries) (see e.g., Lauristin 2004), which reflects the important role of habitus in transforming the cultural experiences. On the other hand, in Soviet times, foreign experience was consciously a scarce resource, by which one could share the Western consumption culture. According to empirical studies (see e.g., Masso and Vihalemm 2005) the impact of entrepreneurial practices (assessment of enterprise, provision of extra services, participating in business projects, etc.) could also be one of the indicators of personal spatiality that describes it as a rational activity.

In Estonia, greater personal spatiality value primarily results in global identification, i.e., being Europeans, which refers to certain preparedness for coping with cultural risk with the purpose of accomplishing particular political goals or social welfare. Identification with other Nordic people has a rather concrete meaning, i.e., it means more open personal spatiality with regard to the neighbouring countries Finland and Sweden. Personal spatiality could be described by identification with Estonians, an Estonian majority nation, which confirms the results of earlier studies (Jamieson 2002; Masso 2002) that emphasize primariness of local identities in formation of pan-regional affiliation. Personal spatiality has a relatively modest role in the formation of social solidarity (i.e., identification with all people living in Estonia, fellow citizens).

From Table 4 it appears that, unlike Estonia, Sweden is characterised by lower differentiation of personal spatiality in socio-demographic groups. Various socio-demographic groups are relatively equally open to EU and other Western countries, and, to some extent, more closed to former Eastern Bloc and geographically distant countries. Similarly to Estonia, one of the relevant distinctive factors was ethnic or cultural background, i.e., the Swedes born in Sweden are culturally more open towards the ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU countries such as Latvia, Finland, France, and England, which may express the ethno-cultural belonging of the national minorities and their difficulties in identifying themselves on the basis of international organisations inherent for the region. Also, similarly to Estonia, the income was a moderate factor describing personal spatiality in Sweden, which confirms the hypothesis of the importance of a trust culture in decreasing cultural uncertainty.

The most important factor in the formation of personal spatiality in Sweden appeared to be trust in the media, i.e., greater trust in the media mostly elicits greater value in personal spatiality index. While analysing personal spatiality in reference to Estonia, the results are controversial, i.e., average media trust brings along a higher value of the personal spatiality index, if there is low or high media trust the value of the personal spatiality index is higher in reference to Estonia. Similar trends appeared in the case of other countries (e.g., Arab, Latin America, etc.), which may express potential feeling of cultural uncertainty and risk in reference to these countries. In addition to media, another institutional factor emerged in differentiating personal spatiality in Sweden, which was education. Similarly to Estonia, trust in state institutions in Sweden was not an important factor describing cultural certainty-uncertainty. Probably, the reason for this is the relatively high prestige of state institutions (e.g., the church, the government, and the police) among all groups of the population in Sweden.

Similarly to Estonia, personal spatiality is related to global identification. A bit greater number of relations than in Estonia reflects the longer experience of this country as a civil society, which is based on the global space and (transnational) networks. While in Estonia, important variables describing the personal spatiality were (desired) identities of the Europeans and Nordic people, in Sweden the dominant factor was identification with humanity, which refers to post-modern identification based on common ideas and beliefs. The latter is also shown by relations with identification based on spiritual interests (i.e., people with whom I share a common memory). Weak relations in identification with fellow citizens and people living in Sweden, on the other hand, shows little impact of personal spatiality on the established social solidarity and the functioning of civil society.

In summation, different patterns in personal spatiality in Estonia and Sweden come from different modernisation patterns, individual experiences and interpretation patterns of social groups. Socio-demographic difference of transition countries is expressed in different perception of today's economic-cultural hegemonic countries, i.e., the greater the cultural and economic capital of the social group, the more secure one feels about these cultures. Estonian inhabitants certainty-uncertainty about other (i.e., neighbouring) countries, which are more familiar and create less feeling of risk and uncertainty when in contact with them, depends more or less on personal ‘capitalisation’ of the people. Although Estonia has quickly moved to the global space (of identity), the formation of personal spatiality may not mean the formation of a civil society that unites all the members of society; it is rather about diverse (transcultural) networks characteristic of certain single groups. Cultural opening also takes place in the form of defensive community identity, i.e., through identification with local or territorially close culture. Unlike individual resources, which were the main distinguishers in the Estonian society, there were important institutional factors in Sweden (e.g., media), which derives from the country's longer traditions of global space and stronger civil society.

In the present article, personal spatiality was analysed using the example of two EU countries with different economic, political, and cultural background, Estonia and Sweden.

It emerged from the results of analysis that for the inhabitants of Estonia as a transition society, the average number of personal contacts with other countries is similar to that for the inhabitants of Sweden. On the other hand, in Sweden, interest in the news about other countries is significantly higher than in Estonia where the media usage differentiates, similarly to cultural contacts, the social groups. Perceived cultural closeness was in Estonia homogeneously spread among social groups and higher than in Sweden. Thus, readiness for cultural contacts as well as for economic and other types of innovation could become a considerable social resource in transition countries, at least using Estonia as an example.

In the personal spatiality of Estonian inhabitants, the neighbouring welfare states (Finland, Sweden) were attractive. In Sweden, there was a greater symbolic impact of the so-called economic-cultural hegemonic countries (the USA/Canada, Germany, England/Ireland) on the formation of personal space of the people, which is expressed in both interests in the news and in perceiving these countries as culturally close. Thus, if in Estonia, a greater role in personal spatiality is played by territorial closeness, then in Sweden territory plays less of a role and media representations are more important.

In Estonia, greater cultural closeness with EU hegemonic countries characterises the inhabitants with greater social capitalisation level, which shows the ‘EU as an elite project’. Other sources confirm that the categories referring to global cohesion may rather acquire the connotation of successful self-identification, not to become the marker of our-feeling that unites all the society members in Estonia (see also Vihalemm and Masso 2004). In this way the space creates a material/social hierarchy, due to which EU enlargement may cause splitting in the societies of transition countries. Thus, personal spatiality may become a factor, which separates the society into a personally ‘globalised’ group, and a group that feels uncertainty in connection with EU enlargement and globalisation.

Personal spatiality appeared to be the indicator of internal trust culture in the society. The personal spatiality, trust, and identity do not differentiate social groups in Sweden. In post-communist Estonia, personal spatiality has opened up together with the ‘opening’ of Estonia to the Western world and in the context of development of a democratic culture. For example, when in Sweden the relations between personal spatiality and trust in the media could be an indicator of a stable media society, then in Estonia the higher trust towards social groups (i.e., the entrepreneurs, scientists, politicians, etc.) is connected to personal spatiality, which could show the importance of spatial perceptions in the development of a democratic culture. The results show that the formation of a trust culture and overcoming transition trauma is essential in avoiding cultural isolation.

To summarise, the results of the analysis show that the fast geo-cultural opening up of Estonia due to economic and political transformation is not necessarily expressed in a more modest readiness for transcultural communication compared with Sweden. However, perception of spatial certainty-uncertainty in a post-communist country is related to the social integration of certain groups of people, i.e., open personal spatiality is in Estonia common among the groups with larger social resources.

The research was supported by the Estonian Science Foundation within the projects ‘Changing collective identities in Estonia in the context of moving into the global world’ (grant number ETF5845) and ‘Estonia as an emerging information and consumer society: Social sustainability and quality of life’ (grant number SF0180017507). I am much obliged to my PhD instructor Triin Vihalemm for many helpful comments, Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and Communication at the University of Tartu. I am grateful for suggestions from Professor Peeter Vihalemm. I am also thankful for many helpful remarks made by numerous reviewers.